Cast Iron Lamppost Archives
 Talk about
off the wall! This was about as rare a sight, as a streetlight
hunter could hope to see, in the New York City of the early 1980's.
This long, braced mastarm hung off a Lower Westside commercial
building, in the vicinity of Hudson St. I forgot the street.
I'll take a wild guess at it being Thomas. Kevin, I need your
help. It was probably a common practice, in ancient days, to fasten these masts, as well as Bishop Creek mastheads and the myriad gaslights that preceded them, to the walls of buildings on old, narrow sidestreets. It saved money and pole maintainance costs as well as space and it probably provided a few bucks up front to the landlords as well. I did a double take when I first saw this. I've not seen another like it since. You'll see me frequently refer on this site, to this style mastarm, coupled with the poles they are normally attached to, as "Corvingtons". That is not an official designation. A present day maker of similar poles markets a model with that name and for lack of anything else to go with, I took to calling these by that name. |